He is Lancelot
by Thenerdygeekyponders
Summary: Being dead isn't exactly how Lancelot expected it to be. (Oneshot inspired by Lancelot's return and his subsequent demise.)


**Disclaimer: No, Merlin is not mine either. Trust me, if it was, Mordred and Gawain would not be dead.**_ Anyway, I whipped this up a few months ago after that very sad episode with Lancelot being back and then being dead. Oh Lancelot, you were a cool dude. Sucks you died. _

Being dead isn't exactly how Lancelot expected it to be. Well he is…_dead_, but not really, he has to remember because all he did was jump into the portal. He didn't _die_ per say, but he's still _dead_.

…It doesn't make any sense, really.

But then again, what did he expect? Pearly gates and angels raining down upon him? Everlasting clouds and happiness?

It's a lot of work, being dead. Lancelot is no corner cutter when it comes to being a knight and with his training, but _nothing_ would have ever prepared him for fighting the nightmares that crawl and slither and creep in this deadly limbo, where he's the only thing that can remember his name, king, and country.

Sometimes he desperately wishes that Merlin was here, or that magic was not so hated, because knowledge of such would be, undoubtedly, his saving grace.

But Lancelot du Lac does not have a saving grace.

Is not worthy of a saving grace, perhaps?

(He wonders this whenever he remembers Guinevere.)

But then the monsters come back and all he can think about is how to fight.

….When what feels like an eon has passed, he begins to notice how his memory is starting to warp and fade, becoming flickering stutters of still frames that don't work anymore. He begins to forget what he was like as a child, young and carefree, determined to be the best knight in all the land.

Well, he got his wish, but his fate is far different then the one he dreamed of all those summers ago. When he stops fighting for a time, he now desperately goes over and over the memories in his mind, scared that this place is wiping him clean, making him nothing more then a shadow of himself.

It's one of the most frightening thoughts that he's ever had.

No, it's _the_ most frightening thought he's ever had, for nothing can really compare to the feeling of losing yourself, having the _you_ of yourself erased and baptized away in strange black blood that anoints you from your defeated enemies.

(And he is baptized again and again and again and _again_.)

Once the eon has passed, he doesn't remember anything of being young.

He wonders if it was important, he wonders if it mattered, and he wonders if it _really_ mattered. That night he screams louder then the Banshees as he struggles against the dark hold of this place against his soul. His screaming makes him mute for a time, but the monsters cower in fear regardless. The ash sky weeps dark tears for him, he suspects, as he holds onto his time at Camelot with trembling, fragile threads.

Then as what feels like the second eon passes, Lancelot gets a fearsome reputation for himself in this land of shadows, death, and ash.

He is:

The Black Knight

_Man of the Lake_

_The Swordsman_

_DEATH._

He revels in the names, titles, for a time, glad that they spread fear and apprehension among the ranks of the dead that hound him so. But then his memories slip away more and more each day, leaving him hollow and lost, unsure if he's supposed to remember, or care if it's important.

He's just…. _unsure_.

Unsure of who he is, what he is, why and where and how?

(Because this place seems to be all he's ever known, though half clear faces and names wish to tell him otherwise.)

Guinevere

_Arthur _

_Merlin _

He only remembers their names and blurred faces, and they're like specters, haunting him in the night, tormenting him, taunting him, making him regret not recalling a life before being a fearsome warrior in this place.

He never mourns his youth passing, he never mourns forgetting the day he met Guinevere. He never gives a second thought to Merlin or Arthur or fighting for Camelot.

He never sheds a tear for the man he once was, that he's forgetting.

Soon his memories have left him, but he gave up caring a long time ago.

All he remembers now is _this_ place, this dimension of death, this land where he is the best knight, the only knight, the truest knight.

This place where the weak worship him as Death almighty. This place where he cleanses the land of the unrighteous, bathing the earth in their blood to make in anew.

He is a knight, _the_ knight, and he is all that there is.

He is the beginning, and he is the end.

He is

_Lancelot. _


End file.
